Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Harper's 'Let's not and say we did' Mulroney inquiry

Harper's "hand-picked independent third party" advisor has regretfully noted that his mandate "does not allow him to recommend that a public inquiry not be held" at all into the Mulroney Schreiber scandal, but that doesn't preclude him recommending a very narrow limited one behind closed doors.Right off the top David Johnston suggested it shouldn't be fully public, and

CP : "Johnston's limited terms of reference do not include the $2.1-million libel settlement Mulroney negotiated with the Canadian government in 1997 while allegedly misrepresenting, under oath, his relationship with Schreiber.And they would likely keep an inquiry from following the $10 million in "grease money" that German court records suggest was given to Schreiber by Airbus International to bribe Canadian officials in the 1980s."

Chronicle Herald : Also, it "should not examine the business dealings of Brian Mulroney’s friends who profited from an agreement the government signed to build an armoured car factory at Bear Head in Cape Breton."- the one that was never built.

or the Muldoon's tax records.

Yesterday Con House Leader Peter Van Loan told the Commons - surprise! - the government intends to follow the valued advice of their hand-picked advisor, and Mulroney has graciously said in a statement that he would co-operate with the inquiry "within its mandate" recommended by Johnston.

So what the hell is left for the inquiry to do exactly?

Conservative MP Russ Hiebert : "The conclusions that he [Johnston] came to were very similar to the recommendations that we provided in our minority report, basically acknowledging that there was no wrongdoing, and that if there was going to be a public inquiry, it should be focused on the transition that high public office-holders make to private life."

That is not even fucking close.What Canadians would like to know is why they paid Mulroney $2.1M in libel fees because he didn't care to talk about $10M in grease money or the $300,000 he has since admitted to personally receiving from Schreiber.I think they'd also like to know that their government is not so irretrievably broken or crooked that it can't handle an open public inquiry.